Part 8

After recovery from serious illness he took up his rôle as popular lecturer and writer, and as such he had many years of happy success. A book on Cage Birds (1872-1876), and a second edition of the Tierleben date from this period, which was also interrupted by his Siberian journeys (1876) and by numerous ornithological expeditions, for instance to Hungary and Spain, along with the Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria. But hard work, family sorrows, and finally, perhaps, the strain of a long lecturing tour in America aged Brehm before his time, and he died in 1884.

For these notes I am indebted to a delightful appreciation of Brehm which Ernest Krause has written in introduction to the third edition of the Tierleben, edited by Pechuel-Loesche, and as regards the naturalist’s character I can only refer to that essay. As to his published work, however, every naturalist knows at least the Tierleben, and on that a judgment may be safely based. It is a monumental work on the habits of animals, founded in great part on personal observation, which was always keen and yet sympathetic. It is a classic on the natural history of animals, and readers of Darwin will remember how the master honoured it.

Doubtless Brehm had the defects of his qualities. He was, it is said, too generous to animals, and sometimes read the man into the beast unwarrantably. But that is an anthropomorphism which easily besets the sympathetic naturalist. He was sometimes extravagant and occasionally credulous. He did not exactly grip some of the subjects he tackled, such as, if I must specify, what he calls “the monkey-question”.

It is frankly allowed that he was no modern biologist, erudite as regards evolution-factors, nor did he profess to attempt what is called zoological analysis, and what is often mere necrology, but his merit is that he had seen more than most of us, and had seen, above all, the naturalist’s supreme vision--the vibrating web of life. And he would have us see it also.

III.

The success of the pictures which Brehm has given us--of bird-bergs and tundra, of steppes and desert, of river fauna and tropical forest--raises the wish that they had been complete enough to embrace the whole world. As this ideal, so desirable both from an educational and an artistic standpoint, has not been realized by any one volume, we have ventured to insert here a list of some more or less analogous English works by naturalist-travellers, sportsmen, and others--

Adams, A. Leith. Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta (Edinburgh, 1870).

Agassiz, A. Three Cruises of the “Blake” (Boston and New York, 1888).

Baker, S. W. Wild Beasts and their Ways: Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (London, 1890).

Bates, H. W. Naturalist on the Amazons (6th Ed. London, 1893).

Belt, T. Naturalist in Nicaragua (2nd Ed. London, 1888).

Bickmore, A. S. Travels in the East Indian Archipelago (1868).

Blanford, W. T. Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (London, 1870).

Bryden, H. A. Gun and Camera in Southern Africa (London, 1893). Kloof and Karroo (1889).

Burnaby, F. A Ride to Khiva (8th Ed. London, 1877).

Buxton, E. N. Short Stalks, or Hunting Camps, North, South, East, and West (London, 1893).

Chapman, A. and C. M. Buck. Wild Spain (London, 1892).

Cunningham, R. O. Notes on the Natural History of the Straits of Magellan (Edinburgh, 1871).

Darwin, C. Voyage of the “Beagle” (1844, New Ed. London, 1890).

Distant, W. L. A Naturalist in the Transvaal (London, 1892).

Drummond, H. Tropical Africa (London, 1888).

Du Chaillu, P. B. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (London, 1861). Ashango Land (1867).

Eha. A Naturalist on the Prowl, or in the Jungle (London, 1894).

Forbes, H. O. A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago (London, 1885).

Guillemard. Cruise of the “Marchesa” (London, 1886).

Heilprin, A. The Bermuda Islands (Philadelphia, 1889).

Hickson, S. J. A Naturalist in North Celebes (London, 1889).

Holub, Emil. Seven Years in South Africa (1881).